Andy 0:03
Welcome to HigherEdJobs Podcast, Ask the Expert Edition I'm Andy Hibel, the Chief Operating Officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs. Today we're joined by Dr. Ilene Crawford. Ilene, nice to have you here today.

Ilene 0:16
Hello. Glad to be here.

Andy 0:18
Ilene is an executive coach, Higher Education Consultant, and former Provost with more than 30 years of experience in higher education. Her background includes Faculty leadership, academic administration, and supporting professionals as they think through career growth, leadership, and next steps. For this episode, we have a listener question about career an outside of the traditional management path. Here's the question. From an administrative perspective, is it possible to continue advancing into mid or senior level roles without pursuing a management track, and what like that path look like? Ilene, what guidance would you offer someone who wants to keep growing professionally, but may not want management to be the main path forward?

Ilene 1:03
Andy, thank you for having me. I am thrilled to be here on Ask the Expert. This is a very interesting question we have today. The short answer is anything is possible, but there are trade-offs and fewer opportunities, but I'd like to take a closer look at the question first. What is it about management that does not appeal to the listener? Is it the increased responsibility? Since the listener wants to continue advancing into the mid-career or senior level roles, I don't think that's it. So, is it supervising others? That seems more likely. So let's consider that for a minute. Supervising others is not for everyone, but some people close off opportunities for themselves prematurely, because they are unsure how to build their managerial skills. Can talk specifically about those abilities, judgment, discernment, problem solving, decision-making, teamwork, the growth mindset needed to develop them in the field, so to speak. It does take time and effort to develop these management skills, and the listener may be in a role now where it's not clear to them how to make that jump. Again, supervising others is not for everyone, the challenges are there, but the rewards can be great, and there are more advancement opportunities into mid-career and senior level roles for people with supervisory experience. So, I would encourage the listener to ask themselves if they've gained the experience in insight to know that supervising others does not align with their interests, or if they're not seeing their path to becoming a skilled supervisor. If It's the latter, coaches, mentors, and current supervisors are all resources that can help you grow. Let's take look at the question and take it at face value. Higher education is a broad with many different types of institutions that have varying missions and needs. For example, while all institutions serve students, some roles have no contact with students. And similarly, while all institutions have a faculty, some roles have no contact with faculty members. So, here are some possibilities for our listener to consider. Some institutions are very small, fewer than 5,000 students and employees combined. Small institutions are more likely to require employees to wear many hats and to be more generous in their functional knowledge and their responsibilities, but small institutions can also have very flat organizational structures where there are not many managerial layers. At a large institution in the same role, you might be supervising people, but at a small institution, it might all be you. So, if being a cook and the bottle washer appeals to you, consider a small institution. Conversely, some institutions are enormous. The sizes of towns or small cities, and while the organizational chart has many more layers, large organizations can more easily afford specialists to have narrower areas of expertise and may be on a team without own direct reports, especially in areas that support senior leadership with finance, compliance, and fund development. But I still want to caution the listener that it would be difficult to move into most senior leadership roles like a vice presidency without managerial experience. So, it would encourage them to test this thesis in a few ways. First by really carefully monitoring job listings for mid-career and senior leadership roles and higher ed jobs, to understand the expectations of these roles and their areas of responsibilities, what these supervisory requirements look like. Second finding leaders in the types of senior roles that they are interested in and learn more about their paths into those roles. That might sound intimidating, but leaders often want to support the development of a early career leaders. Summer outside of the pace of the academic year can be an easier time to get a yes to a 15 minute virtual coffee to share someone's leadership journey. So these steps will help the listener calibrate their expectations, and potentially gain recommendations for coaches and mentors that can help them chart their own path. Good luck.

Andy 5:38
Good luck is a great way to summarize your thoughts here, but also kind of to this listener, is good luck. I hope they find what they're looking for and I think there's a lot of merit in what they're looking for. I think you said it well when you said if you're trying to be a senior leader within an academic department or administrative office, it's going to be hard, particularly the flatter and the smaller the organization is. But even at larger organizations, that's going to be difficult as well. This is just part of what the job requires you to do at a different level, but to a certain degree has a lot of the same parts. I'm probably going to dive deeper into the area I'm most familiar what where I grew up within higher education, which is advancement, and I can say that this is like an age old question for advancement professionals. If you love working with donors and you want to continue working with donors throughout your career, probably going into senior level positions will get you still working with donors, but not like The more you get into management, the less you're going to spend seeing donors face to face. And I think that this is a question I've seen a lot of professionals and friends go through over the years. And I kind kind of dissect this a little bit and really want to know your thoughts on this. I think we use the terms management and leadership synonymously. And I'm going to try to draw an analogy between how those terms are used as well as power and influence. Mana gives you the power to make the decision. You can say, I want to do this. Influence is how you work with your peers to do whatever it is the group is wanting to do, or what you advocated for is what's happening, what you advocated for. A leader uses influence in a way, and I know influence has sometimes a negative connotation, but trying to meet people where they are and understand where the opportunity may lie.

Ilene 7:55
Exactly.

Andy 7:56
And I think it's really easy in higher education to be a leader throughout your career without having to be a manager. And that part I'd encourage you because you said it and I agree wholeheartedly that not everybody wants to be a manager. So if you don't want to be a manager, understand the limitations that you're going to put on your career, but understand that you can be every bit of a leader that you like to be by doing that.

Ilene 8:24
Yeah. I think this is a really useful distinction.

Andy 8:28
And I think I really not well kept secret, but not everybody knows it. But I always like to point out if you're in that management position, you have the legitimate power of the organization without your ability to lead and influence the people around you. You're not going to be a great manager. So that needs to be baked in there. So if you're not considering management for the reasons that you stated, I get it. But remember, if you're already a leader, you have a lot of the tools you need to be to be a manager. So just consider that.

Ilene 9:03
Absolutely. I think, you know, being able to lead from wherever you are in the organization is an opportunity that everyone has. And I've watched some leaders myself, test out more managerial roles and and see that that was less of a fit for them than where they were. That they had been, you know, pardon the expression a one man band and being able to, you know, direct and really give birth to and grow, you know, a specific influential program. And through that experience, they had a lot of influence, they had a lot of impact on the, on the organization, where some of the policies around undergraduate, credit transfer and what the general education program looked at truly moved and positive directions under their leadership. But when they moved, you know, into a more management opportunity that opened up for them. The work was less fulfilling in some ways because it was less about. seeing direct impact on students in this case. And there was more challenge that they encountered having, you know, a broader portfolio, but having the work to your distinction, you know, more management and less, less leadership. You know, that that impact on people's lives and the organization, was less visible because it was, it was diffused in some ways. And that was a really powerful lesson for them about, you know, what was meaningful work for them. And it was more the leadership side, where they were seeing a need and an opportunity for the And they were finding a way to address that narrow specific need in a way that had great impact. So I would absolutely agree with what you're saying here.

Andy 10:49
I think also kind of this, this whole area you give a very good, when I'd say faculty side, academic side, example, I believe the question hints that it's more towards an administrative office than a faculty department. I would be interested because I come from the administrative side, but in the roles that you've served, you're at the the center of everything where you've sat, from a faculty perspective. It seems like that, particularly with so many different disciplines, so many different ways of thinking different in a larger university, maybe separate a university in amazing deans, Leading those colleges.

Ilene 11:39
yeah.

Andy 11:39
From your perspective, do you think it differs significantly from the administrative office, or are there more similarities than folks that might think between an academic position that requires you to be a manager versus an administrative office?

Ilene 11:56
It's an interesting question. I think there are probably more similarities than you might expect but some in key differences as well. I think that in a leadership position, I keep going back to the discussion that we've had about influence. It really isn't about just telling people what to do. It doesn't matter if you're in a faculty of leadership role or you're an administrative leadership role. It really is about influence. What is your ability to build relationships across the organization? This is about your ability to establish trust, to work cooperatively. Many of the teams that we work on, even at an institution, like an institution of higher education, you can't formally find them on the org chart but are a committee or a task force or strategic planning, the working group along those lines where real work is happening there, and the way that whether you're administrative, side of the house or faculty side of the house, the work that you need to do there to influence people, to help see what's important to them, to align that with the mission of the institution, to see what the opportunity is there and then to help align the human talent and the resources towards that goal or objective. That work remains very much the same. I think, whatever side of the house you're on, if that makes sense.

Andy 13:30
That makes a lot of sense, actually. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you for joining us today. I really enjoyed the conversation and I hope folks who are and enjoyed it as much as I did.

Ilene 13:40
Yeah, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much.

Andy 13:43
And thank you for listening. have questions for experts like Ilene, please feel free to email us at podcast@HigherEdJobs. com or drop us a direct message on X @HigherEdCareers.

We appreciate you listening and we'd love to hear what you think on this subject. So please do reach out to us. Thank you and talk to you again real soon.